The construction site has become a seeming fixture, but crews are clearly making progress on the massive Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center.

The hotel will be 14 stories and hold 440,000 square feet. Inside, there will be 600 rooms, a pair of ballrooms and meeting space. Metro is spearheading the project to serve its convention center across Northeast Holladay Street.

General contractor Mortenson Construction has completed roughly 75 percent of the work on the project, which was designed by ESG Architects of Minneapolis. The project is on schedule, according to senior project manager Pat Clemons and market director Mike Clifford.

“It’s in a prominent position right there by the freeway,” Clifford said. “It’s nice putting a development like this into an area like this, where it sorely needed it. It was a missing link between all of these things. So instead of having a negative there, which were the parking lots and derelict buildings, to be putting in something that actually generates people and creates energy, I think it fits well.”

The building is now roughed in, Clifford said. Glazing is virtually done while roofing has been completed on all structures except the 14-story tower, where mechanical, electrical and plumbing infrastructure work continues.

“There’s quite a bit of work still up in the penthouses and with our mechanical systems,” Clifford said. “And while we get those going, our elevators are in progress. And with our enclosure system we’re dried in, essentially, and now it’s putting on the insulation and skin on the outside.”

Inside, drywall crews have completed eight stories of hotel rooms and are set to start the ninth. Electricians, plumbers, framers, carpenters and other tradespeople, meanwhile, are busy on virtually all floors.

Mortenson is preparing to finish by the end of the year, with the hotel expected to open in early 2020.

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It’s one of the most visible construction projects currently under way anywhere in the Portland metro area – and one of the largest of its kind.

Located at the junction of Northeast Martin Luther King Boulevard and Holladay Street, the Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center is the tri-county Metro government’s long-awaited hospitality addition to the inner eastside of Portland. The 600-room hotel will be 14 stories and have substantial meeting space of its own, including a pair of ballrooms. When it’s finished at the end of 2019, it will have helped to dramatically redraw the city’s eastside skyline.

Right now, however, that vision remains an architectural rendering as roughly 100 to 150 trades workers swarm daily over the post-tensioned concrete skeleton of the building. With seven concrete decks now in place, the project’s superstructure is now about half finished.

“It’s about good communication,” said Dan Sizemore, construction superintendent for Mortenson Construction.  “We’re coordinating everything from deliveries to where we’re going to be each and every day, probably to a level of detail a lot of folks aren’t used to, but that’s what it takes to get a big project like this pulled together.”

Mortenson is both the developer and general contractor for the $240 million project. ESG Architects, Mayer/Reed, Hyatt and Metro round out the project team.

Construction of the hotel started last year. Now, the concrete decks are rapidly stacking up inside a pork chop-shaped piece of land just east of Interstate 5 and Trimet’s Rose Quarter MAX Station. The light-rail line hems in the job site on the south side and makes logistics for the project a substantial challenge, Sizemore said.

“The balance of the site, everybody has a designated area where they can lay down their space, and nobody ever has as much as they wish they could, right?” he said.

It takes daily meetings with subcontractors to confirm delivery schedules, as well as newer technology such as the mobile app Teamup to ensure that the entire construction crew remains on the same page and on time with their work.

“It sounds like a cliché, but its communication,” Sizemore said. “Everybody has to be continuously talking to each other, and as soon as that’s not happening, the problems are pretty evident.”

For Mortenson construction executive Mike Clifford, the biggest project challenge so far has been managing communications between myriad project team members and stakeholders, as well as businesses and property owners located around or near the job site.

“It’s been known about for a long time, and there are a lot of people who have interest in the project,” Clifford said. “And trying to get alignment among those interests is probably where the biggest challenge lays.”

In conjunction with the hotel, a 175,000-square-foot parking garage is being built at the west end of the property. It will feature 447 automobile parking spaces and 130 bicycle spaces, and14,000 square feet will be dedicated to commercial lease space.

“We’ve got lots of bike parking in the project,” Clifford said. “We had to connect to a lot of different users, so it makes for an interesting program for the hotel. But it works out well for how it works in an urban context.”

Currently, concrete is being poured on the structure’s seventh deck. Meanwhile, ironworkers are piecing together the building’s steel-framed ballroom on the project’s north side.

On the interior, the first pre-fabricated wall panels are being put in place, with drywall work about to commence.

“Once we get the building to a dryer state on some of the lower floors we’ll cut drywall loose,” Sizemore said. “You’ll see on levels one, two, three, we’re starting to frame walls and get the overhead roughed in, and you’ll see a lot of the interior spaces are starting to take shape and define themselves. We’re really starting to touch on most of the scopes of work, with the exception of the finish trades.”

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Foundation work is complete on the Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center, a 600-room hotel in the Lloyd District. Officials expect the structure to generate additional conventions and draw more tourists to the area. Mortenson is the developer and design-builder of the $240 million project, which was designed by ESG Architects of Minneapolis. The 14-story building will have a bar, a restaurant and a ground-floor retail market, as well as 32,000 square feet of ballroom and meeting space.

Crews are setting and pouring columns, and deck forming began this week. The first elevated slab pours are expected to start in about three weeks. The 14-story tower will consist of post-tensioned concrete, while a two-story podium will be steel-framed. Work is beginning in earnest this week on the parking garage portion, which will reach six stories and have 425 stalls. The project is slated for completion in 2019.

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The long-planned project to build a massive hotel near the Oregon Convention Center is close to gaining approval. But the Portland Design Commission last week had some lingering details to discuss with the design team during a two-hour meeting.

ESG Architects of Minneapolis is designing the project, which calls for a 600-room hotel and a six-story parking garage with more than 400 spaces. The development is planned for property bounded by Northeast First Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and Northeast Holladay and Multnomah streets.

The design team has been very responsive to many areas of concern, city planner Tim Heron said. He plans to meet with team members several times to refine project details before the next hearing on Oct. 20, when he expects the Design Commission to give its approval.

Heron mentioned three major areas of concern: architectural coherency in response to the Lloyd District; street-level activation for both the hotel and garage along Northeast Holladay Street; and frontage and corner activation along Northeast Second Avenue.

Staffers took issue with the dark appearance of the hotel tower and need for more glazing along storefronts. They also had questions about proposed screening of the garage and street-level pedestrian coverage, as well as use of open slatting over entrances that allow for landscaping but provide no rain protection for people walking by.

Trace Jacques, a principal at ESG Architects, went over each point and explained that the color of the tower would be lightened, as requested by the Design Commission. The metal panels and glass tower will be in three shades of gray, with the darkest shade only for accents.

The metal skin will also be very bright, Jacques said, with a “very silvery, bright finish” and be made of Galvalume, a carbon steel sheet coated with aluminum-zinc alloy.

“That skin is meant to change with different atmospheric and lighting conditions, and it literally does change moment by moment,” he said. “The colors are the same, but the distribution and use are very different than it was before. The metallic finish catches light differently than just painted surfaces.”

Also, in following commissioners’ advice, Jacques said, a prominent stairwell has been moved from the garage corner so that elevator lobbies instead offer views at the corner.

The updated design also includes a new ornamental screening system for the garage and in front of the hotel’s restaurant, with more glazing added, increased retail space at the corners and intimate wood accents at entrances and portals.

One big change in the design to reflect advice of commissioners and staffers was to introduce retail space at the hotel’s southwest corner, Jacques said. The open trellis design could be closed, he added.

“It would allow for some planting below it but is at odds with this desire to have more shelter,” he said. “But it could be just clean hardscape and glazing.”

Retail space was also expanded at the northeast corner, and open bike parking was changed to a fully-enclosed retail space while the street-level generator room was dropped down one level.

The project has been through three design advice hearings and two design reviews since 2014.

Architect Paddy Tillet, a board member of the Portland chapter of the American Institute of Architects, said he has now seen the design three times and believes it has come a long way.

“The greatest challenge in working with a big building of this sort is to find an engagement between the building and the folks on the street,” he said. “The challenge of making scale work at such extremes is a great one, but what we’ve seen is a progression toward what we think is a very good solution.”

Stephanie Soden, chief of staff for Metro Council President Tom Hughes, told the commission that many public agencies – including the city, the state, Multnomah County and Metro – have invested “significant resources” to see the hotel built. It will create thousands of jobs and bring millions of tourist dollars into Portland, she said. Prompt approval is vital, she added.

“The project has experienced delays, which have increased costs,” Soden said. “Any further delays will put the project at risk, and final approval is needed as soon as possible.”

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Ankrom Moisan Architects will not work on the remainder of the $212 million Hyatt Regency hotel project planned near the Oregon Convention Center.

The Portland firm had served as Mortenson Development‘s local design partner on the project, performing urban planning, land use services and other preliminary work. It leaves remaining design work to Minnesota-based ESG Architects.

The news was confirmed in an email Thursday by Ankrom spokeswoman Erin Stutesman.

“Mortenson Construction and Ankrom Moisan decided as a team that having one architecture firm (ESG Architects) lead would streamline the project,” she wrote.

Mortenson has submitted a packet to the Portland Design Commission and anticipates a hearing next month.

“If all goes well we’ll be tying up financing by the end of the year with construction starting in the first quarter of next year,” Tom Lander, Mortenson vice president of development, told the 91��Ƶ.

The hotel project has had a rocky development path to this stage. Metro proposed a plan to publicly finance the project and fielded appeals from rival developer Gordon Sondland. Earlier this year Willamette Week the conditions of an unusual legal settlement to move the project forward: Sondland agreed to drop several lawsuits tying up the project in exchange for a parking lot near the convention center.

Mortenson, headquartered in Minneapolis, has had a Portland office for six years. Aside from the Hyatt hotel, it has three projects now in development, including the Marriott AC Hotel in downtown.

Lander disagreed that Ankrom was added to the team to help the project win approval, then jettisoned, saying the firm was brought on to perform preliminary work only – work that’s now complete.

“Their big contribution as the local entity was helping us understand the urban setting of the project and that that was their role,” he said.

Lander provided a list of 16 local companies he said have all worked on the project.

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A development and financing agreement for a new headquarters hotel, near the Oregon Convention Center, was reached Tuesday after several months of negotiations between Metro and Minneapolis-based Mortenson Development.

The proposal, subject to Metro Council approval, spells out how the $212 million hotel would be financed, built and operated. If councilors were to grant approval later this month, money could go toward costs related to design review, and construction could feasibly start by summer 2015.

If plans were to hold up, the 600-room hotel would open by fall 2017, according to Metro.

“Before we get to closing, we need to design and get approvals for what’s envisioned, and all parties need to line up their financing,” said Andy Shaw, chief of staff for Metro Council President Tom Hughes. “Once that’s done, we will close up the design review process and move into construction.”

The agreement calls for a $15 million increase in the project cost to $212 million because of escalating construction and private lending costs. Mortenson would be responsible for the extra costs. Public financing would remain at $78 million, according to Metro.

Lawsuits challenging public financing plans are pending in Clackamas and Multnomah counties. The Coalition for Fair Budget Priorities, a group of mostly hoteliers, believes public money would be doled out unfairly.

If Metro were to prevail in those suits, it would issue up to $60 million in revenue bonds at closing. The bonds would be paid back over time by proceeds from transient room taxes collected by the hotel.

“We’re confident that we’re going to prevail in those lawsuits,” Shaw said. “We need to ensure that we have the ability to issue the revenue bonds that we have for this project before we close. The legal issues need to be addressed sufficiently before we can proceed.”

The hotel, upon completion, would be purchased from Mortenson by Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp. It would be operated at an upper upscale level – one level below luxury, according to industry standards. As part of the development agreement, Hyatt would provide a 500-room block guarantee with at least 36 months advance notice and a 300-room block guarantee with at least 24 months advance notice.

Metro also would reimburse Mortenson at closing for 40 percent of predevelopment costs, but not more than $600,000. That financing would come from a $4 million grant already approved by Metro, Shaw said.

Minneapolis-based Elness Swenson Graham Architects is the lead design firm for the project and Ankrom Moisan Architects is the local partner, according to Metro.

Mortenson would use a design-build approach, with a target of at least a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver rating. The agreement includes prevailing wage and other workforce equity requirements.

Metro Council will hold a public hearing on the development agreement at its June 19 meeting. The group is expected to vote June 26 whether to approve it.

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